Local, state Democrats go rogue

In scattered state capitals and city halls around the country, a new group of elected officials is telling the federal government to take a hike: Up-and-coming Democrats.

Challenging federal power in sometimes-theatrical ways has been a hallmark of Republican politicians — particularly among the GOP’s more colorful governors — since President Barack Obama took office. But now, with Washington, D.C., in a state of permanent chaos and a host of liberal policy priorities frozen in place, leaders in Obama’s party are starting to stir up trouble of their own.

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Democratic mayors in cities such as Los Angeles and Philadelphia, as well as governors, including Maryland’s Martin O’Malley, have recently announced they will no longer cooperate with certain detainment requests from immigration authorities in Washington. Other heavily blue states and cities, including Chicago and New York state, endorsed similar policies in previous years.

In Colorado and Washington state, voters and local officials have proudly flouted federal drug law by decriminalizing marijuana possession, going beyond the sentencing and enforcement tweaks enacted in other locales and giving legal sanction to the sale and possession of pot.

O’Malley, a likely presidential candidate in 2016, announced in April that Maryland would not automatically comply with so-called “ICE detainers” — federal requests to hold prisoners arrested for other reasons for possible deportation. Immigration reform advocates have criticized such requests as an indiscriminate enforcement method, targeting well-established, if undocumented, civilians as readily as hardened criminals.

In an interview, O’Malley cast the decision to defy the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency as a reaction to gridlock in Washington and the failure of a “particularly obstructionist House of Representatives” to enact a comprehensive immigration overhaul.

“There are some issues that demand action, and you can’t use inaction at the federal level as a cop-out for doing what you believe is best for the people that you serve,” O’Malley said.

“On putting in place a better criteria when it comes to ICE detainers, I see us as leading a movement towards better policy, smarter policy and a more just policy,” he said. “I don’t see that as necessarily running against the federal government. I think we’re running ahead of the federal government.”

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, widely viewed as a future candidate for statewide office and perhaps beyond, struck a similar chord in his immigration rhetoric. He explained at a recent POLITICO event that he was unwilling to keep deploying the resources of his city to prop up a dysfunctional federal enforcement regime. Many of the ICE requests were a “waste of time,” Garcetti said, “taking valuable hours away from the core of policing.”

“There’s no monopoly on power at any level — local, state or federal. And I always say you don’t see the power you have before you exercise it,” he said. “We hope to inspire immigration reform in Washington.”

The rhetoric of local dynamism, highlighting state and municipal innovation in contrast to federal gridlock, has proliferated in both parties for years: Republicans, the opposition party in the Obama era, have hailed state-level efforts to cut taxes, limit the influence of organized labor and resist the Affordable Care Act. Democrats trumpet state and local measures hiking the minimum wage, regulating the sale and ownership of firearms, and legalizing same-sex marriage.